Why Musiala could spark tug of war

He was scrawny and undersized compared with his peers, but you couldn't fail to notice seven-year-old Jamal Musiala.

But the skills that saw him enter the history books of Germany's most storied and successful club - sauntering in from the left before slotting into the bottom corner to complete an 8-0 rout of Schalke - were all on display 10 years ago.

Born in Stuttgart and raised in Fulda, a small city in central Germany, Musiala had only lived in England a matter of months at the time, having moved over with his parents while his mother studied sociology at the University of Southampton.

From that, they took him on.

Before becoming Bayern's youngest scorer with his strike against Schalke, he earned the distinction of being the youngest player to appear in the Bundesliga for the club when he made his debut against Freiburg in June, aged just 17 years and 115 days.

And he regularly "played up" in higher age groups as he progressed through Chelsea's academy - he was only 15 years old when he first played for the Blues' U18s.

The youngster's dribbling skills and eye for goal immediately commanded attention, but the Chelsea's coaches felt it was Musiala's work ethic that truly separated him from the pack.

Between the ages of 11 and 14, Musiala attended Whitgift School in Croydon, which has strong - if unofficial - relationships with Chelsea and Crystal Palace and lists Callum Hudson-Odoi, Victor Moses and Bertrand Traore among its famous football alumni.

Andrew Martin, a former Crystal Palace player who now serves as Whitgift's director of football, first encountered Musiala when the school's under-11s played against the then-Chelsea academy star's primary school team in the semi-finals of a county-wide tournament.

That showed how much every game meant to him.

"His preference was England, purely because he'd played on the circuit against all the other academy boys - he'd played against Arsenal, Tottenham, Newcastle and so forth," says Martin.

"So when they met up for England squads, he knew them from playing against them.

As his standout performances at international tournaments with Chelsea began to generate interest from around the continent - with a move to Spain once close to fruition - the clarion call of his homeland's biggest club proved too tempting to refuse.

They plan for the majority of his football this season to be played in the third tier with the club's second string

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